


halcyon days

by sapoeysap



Category: Buzzfeed: Worth It (Web Series)
Genre: Blood, Emetophobia, Hanahaki Disease, Heavy Angst, Language of Flowers, M/M, Multi, Sad, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-02
Packaged: 2019-08-16 18:19:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16500371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapoeysap/pseuds/sapoeysap
Summary: On self-reflection, Andrew's only flaw is the fact that he is a man in love.





	halcyon days

_loneliness I can pull through, but when it leaves will it take all thoughts of you?_

Andrew is the kind of man who gets addicted to things easily, pre-dispositioned to picking up bad habits and struggling to drop them. He’s also the kind of man that won’t deny himself anything but is wary enough to take it in moderation. So, he drinks, but keeps himself in check, never attempts to reach blackout drunk, just enjoys hard liquor occasionally. He never smokes, apart from sometimes, and its social at best, and only touches pot like once a year. Instead he works out the addictive habits through cooking and work.

Andrew is the kind of man that says he’s a glass half empty kind of person, even though he believes that the glass is half full, but it’s easier and more fun to keep up a persona of mild pessimism. Knows he’s funny enough and individual enough to be a someone in the office, that his dynamic works well with his colleagues. That he has earnt his job, his place in the office banter. The thoughts that he isn’t wanted or liked only rest on his mind late at night and only on the nights when he keeps random hours, which is more often than not nowadays. It’s his own personal neurosis. He’s a proud man but not a fool, so he confides in people, never keeps his anxieties and fears secret, only misstates the truth to appear a little bit more okay than he actually is. Other’s reassurance that he isn’t alone, even if sometimes it feels like it, mean more than he would let on to them in return. Instead just brushed away in soft smiles.

The job that surrounds him with understanding people, a job, that gives him mediocre ‘social media star’ associations, which amounts to occasionally paid experiences and the automatic followers for instant ‘like’ validation. But a job that pays enough for him to have an apartment, that he owns, with no roommates, which is though occasionally lonely is made up for in the form of a cat. A patient little cat that wraps around his feet, meows very politely to beg to be lifted and cuddled. A tiny furry lifeline to escapism when the demands of people are too much. It’s also a job that allows for the exploration of the fineries in life, in a way where he wants travel back in time and edit his yearbook from the mostly joking, ‘most likely to be a serial killer’ to ‘most likely to eat gold leaf and truffle on the internet’.

All in all, Andrew knows he’s easy going, likeable if slightly odd looking.  Made up of different parts that balance each other out. He’s content with who he is and where he is, something that up until a few years ago, seemed nearly impossible. Except for one flaw, a most glaring flaw that is buried down, mixed in with the rest of his personality, a flaw that is an everyday part of his life. For Andrew’s a man in love. It feels reductive to describe it as a flaw, but that’s what it feels like, a weakness in the persona that he’s spent years cultivating.

It’s not a problem, to be in love, it’s not even more complicated because he happens to be in love with a co-worker. In fact, perhaps because it’s a co-worker, somehow that uncomplicates it, even when it goes from a crush to what he knows is full-blown love. Uncomplicated in the way where he can always just be around this crush, appreciate their presence instead of wiling his time away moping. It’s just something he deals with, like a rational adult, the kind of rational adult whose hiding both a crush and his sexuality. The hiding his sexuality is what makes him feel most guilty, that he’s in this surrounding where both his employer and the bubble of a world around him are accepting of it. Part of him says that he’s not out because biphobia is still unfortunately a very real thing, part of him says it’s because it’s such a part of him and has been all his life, in a way where he knew he liked boys in the ‘not correct’ way, long before he knew he liked girls. And if it has been a part of his life for so long, then why does it suddenly matter that he needs to label it so outwardly.

Why it’s a problem, is because the butterflies in his stomach are matched by storm clouds in his head. Butterflies that make him want to write down sonnets, storm clouds that tell him its unrequited. Except he lives with it, let’s his cat run around his feet, let’s his friends compliment him and fill his life, just lets himself keep going. Until one day, he gets a cough that seems more persistent than normal. The kind of cough that could be written off as just a winter ailment, anywhere else, but in the heat of California, it doesn’t really work.

What strikes Andrew as odd, is the timing of it all, that it happens when the Worth It team get back from Japan, that at this moment is when the world decides is perfect for him to start coughing up cherry blossoms like the ones he saw in Japan. To start coughing up cherry blossoms for a love he has known is unrequited for years now, to start coughing up cherry blossoms for Steven, a Steven that’s moved to New York yet is still such a part of his life.

Maybe it’s because Steven’s moved to New York, is only available on shoots and through face time, that Andrew decides he will hide the fact he’s coughing up flowers, that he’s burdened with Hanahaki disease.

It’s the disease that you hear about, in whispers in high school, and as farfetched plots on soap operas. The disease that Andrew knows will kill him, slowly and brutally.

Criminal that something so poetic will be the death of him.

He stares at the tissue, that contains three beautiful blossoms and calls his mum to tell her everything, over a line that crackles and distorts. She cries, and he doesn’t and that’s the biggest indication of everything. Of how willing he is to die, that the option to get them removed is right there, down the street in a specialist doctor’s office placed there by life as some cruel joke. The way Andrew knows he will never go to that office, that the first and last time he will say the words ‘I have Hanahaki disease’ have just occurred on the phone. To have the flowers that are now budding in his stomach, biding their time before their eventual bloom, waiting to pierce him inside out, they act not as a burden, but as an indication that this is how his life was meant to turn out. And without those flowers, he will be without the thought of Steven, and to never think of Steven like that again, is an act of loneliness that he could never pull through. It’s the coward’s way out, suicide planned in advance, a ticking of a clock to an unknown date.

After all, he’s the kind of man who gets addicted easily and Steven Lim is the sweetest thing to be addicted to.

The darkest thing is how quickly he gets addicted to the pain of coughing up petals, of letting them travel through his body. The secrecy of having to hide the ailment, you can only go so long writing a cough off in a state known for being warm. There’s a thrill every time he lies about things, especially as he must get more and more extravagant with every lie he tells.But the thrill each lie uttered turns into a pit in his stomach whenever he lies about the persistent cough to Steven and Adam. It feels wrong, they’ve done so much for him and he can’t be truthful to them when they deserve nothing but the truth. The days when he lies to them are the days when he spirals the most, disappears into himself, lays down in bed and imagines scenarios. His favourite is the one where he just comes out with the truth, tells Steven and Adam, that he’s dying because he is in love with Steven. The image he conjures up in his head always seems the most fragile, like a glass mosaic easily smashed, even when he allows it to drift to Steven saying that he shares the love, when he chases that miniscule second, he tricks his body into feeling like there aren’t any flowers rooting down into his stomach.

Two months pass, and the weather actually does turn into California’s replication of winter, where the chill in the air requires more than one layer of clothes.  The cycle of guilt and the thrill of lying are starting to wear thin. It’s late, the apartment is lonely, and his mindset is wild. That’s the night he tells Adam, down a phone line, because he’s chickenshit and afraid to look someone in the eye and admit he’s in love with his best friend. Adam, who is the most dutiful of friends, drives over. It’s the first time Andrew allows himself to cry over it, tears allowed by a close friendship, Adam’s imploring support peered over thick-rimmed glasses.

Adam stays, sleeps in Andrew’s bed and just holds him tight. Whisper’s apologies and reassuring words. Never comments on Andrew’s sudden bisexuality, or the fact he is in love with Steven, just passes a tissue over and makes a remark about buying a handkerchief for the environment’s sake. It’s the first time Andrew actually gets an uninterrupted night of sleep in what feels like months and when Adam leaves, the warmth of his parting hug doesn’t leave until Andrew’s body is wracked by another coughing fit, and the cherry blossoms that fall onto the tissue are joined by one bluebell petal. He’s not the smartest man in the world, but when he falls to the floor clutching the myriad of petals in the tissue, he knows exactly who the bluebells are for.

The Amazon package that arrives the next day, contains a pack of handkerchief’s, he barely gets one out of the packet before the biggest most painful cough yet takes over his body and the bluebell petals equal the cherry blossom petals on the cloth. The moment the coughing fit is over, he books an appointment with the stupid specialist doctor, because the internet and fiction have thousands of pages on what to do with Hanahaki disease that involves one flower taking root, but not Hanahaki disease that involves two flowers.

In some ways it feels like floating, moving further away from his body, like he’s inside a glass, and its half filled with water and he’s barely staying afloat. Admitting the disease to his mum and Adam seemed easier than admitting it to a medical professional who specifies in the disease. The doctor is a kind lady, but the moment the words leave his mouth, her face twists subtly from a comforting smile into a grimace. Indication that the prognosis will be grim.  Her voice is patient as she tells him that two flowers are worse than just one because, with one you can last, one is something that is a death sentence but a far-off distant death sentence. Two, the doctor tells him, gives him a year or less.

She offers an ultrasound, and the image on the screen is enough to make him want to throw up, actual vomit instead of petals. Her words are static in his ears, the visual shows a clear difference in both flowers, the cherry blossoms have a thick root, the bluebells are smaller. He thinks she might have said something about removal, but it’s a resigned ask, they both know the answer will be no, he can’t lose that connection to Steven and Adam, it would ruin him more than death would.

The doctor offers to print a picture of the ultrasound, he takes it home and puts it on the fridge. He plans his funeral at the kitchen table. It’s a macabre scene, a liminal space made where one shouldn’t be. Dusk falls, and Andrew sits illuminated only by his laptop screen. Even soft meowing from cat doesn’t pull him out of it. A last will and testament seem stupid drafted on a Pages document, glaring back at him. He calls the office, says he’s taking some sick days, even though he knows he will wake up to concerned messages from everyone. Sleep is fitfull, coming in waves, and he’s fully awake not long before the first notification chimes on his phone come through. The sun is peaking through the slats in his windows, and every single chime feels like a cheery death knell. He messages back to the Worth It Group chat, another lie about how he visited the doctors because of the cough and the advice is to rest up. He outright ignores Adam’s separate message, ‘If you need anything, just say’, because he feels like he is not deserving of that friendship. Not when he has gone so far to fall in love with Adam as well.

Work can only be put off for so long, sulking feels too teen drama when he’s nearing thirty. He has at least a weeks’ worth of holiday he could take off, instead, he goes back after two days. Learns to hide the cough, suppress it or cover it up as choking on a drink. Chews more gum, like the occasional hit of menthol will suddenly flush out the flowers that bloom inside. It doesn’t, but it oddly soothes the pain. Adam offers smiles and takes him aside for reassurances, a wild misaimed comfort. The way Adam remarks on everything, soft with an edge of boyish banter, almost makes Andrew feel like out of anyone Adam would reciprocate the love. But the presence of the Hanahaki disease means to Andrew that he has it because the love he has for Steven and Adam is not reciprocated. That’s the kicker and when he thinks like that, the coughs get worse. And there’s a distinct feeling of a weight he carries around in his stomach that’s moved from an imagined presence to a very real weight, thick and heavy. 

It is something he can cope with. It’s another month until they film the next season for Worth It, which means Steven’s in New York for a little while longer. So, Andrew doesn’t have to cope with constantly seeing Steven’s face at every turn. There’s a weird disparity between the number of flowers he coughs up, that seems to have no association with the world around him. Sometimes on days he spends just talking to Adam, he coughs up more cherry blossoms, but other days less and so on. There’s no pattern, just a continuous beautiful arrangement of flowers that spill from his mouth. He almost chokes on air when Adam tells him it would be okay to cough them up around him, Andrew wants to cry, because Adam is in ignorant bliss as to the bluebells being coughed up, tiny delicate petals that Andrews coughing up in a foolish search for Adam’s love.

That night an equal amount of cherry blossoms and bluebell petals come out, covered in blood. He gives in to curiosity, sat on his bathroom floor staring at the blood-stained handkerchief in one hand, and Google open on his phone in the other hand. He’s put off searching the meaning of the delicate petals that reside inside him for so long, not wanting to give into the ‘meaning of flowers’ ideology that daytime tv and cheesy romance movies purport about Hanahaki. Google tells him that the meaning of the Cherry Blossoms is not straightforward, more to do with Japanese culture, the fragility of life, their two-week bloom of beauty fading into their falling to the ground, therefore, a symbolic death. They remind him so little of Steven, apart from the pastel colours of his hair, he chalks it up to them taking root just after the trip to Japan. The meaning of bluebells is more concise, each of the top Google hits attribute Bluebells to humility. The Bluebells are so clearly for Adam, so obviously for him.

He calls the doctor first thing in the morning; her voice is soft when she says coughing up the blood means he only has a month or two. He shouldn’t tune her out, not again, but the moment she brings up telling the people the flowers are for, her voice is just white noise.

His death is looming, instead of a sense of fear that he thought it would bring, he starts to feel lighter. The coughing slows down, becomes more of a constant tickle at the back of his throat, like his body is resigning itself to its fate. The tickle contends with the fact he always feels like he’s going to choke up onblood.

Steven comes back from New York, earlier than he should have. Andrew chalks it up to a likelihood that Adam just coerced Steven into coming back to L.A. early, without reason and just through power of persuasion. The flowers seem to want to spill out of him the moment he lays eyes on Steven. And when he embraces the taller man, a tiny cough escapes him, it comes out as more of a whimper. He watches Adam’s eyes go wide in shock and looks down to Steven’s shoulder, where a cherry blossom and a bluebell petal rest, dissected down the middle by a splatter of blood. Stark red already oxidising to rusty brown on Steven’s beautiful blue jumper.

It’s not how he pictured the admission, but it seems fitting, to be directed by Adam whose hands won’t stop shaking, into an unused meeting room in the office, while a confused Steven trails behind looking lost. The way it feels like every single employee that Buzz Feed has ever seen has eyes on the three of them as they make their way into the room. The weight of a group of people’s eyes doesn't compare to the burning gaze that is Steven’s eyes on him. Adam gives a slight nod of his head, and the words come out of Andrew’s mouth slowly.

‘I have Hanahaki disease. Have had it for a while now.’ He can’t look either of them in the eyes, he focuses on the wall, the tacky motivational office décor is better than the brown eyes in front of him.

‘I told Adam a while ago because it was for you, Steven. The cherry blossoms, they're for you. I’ve been in love with you for longer than they’ve been there, but after Japan…’ Andrew finds himself trailing off, the pause is the heaviest that’s ever laid between the three of them, takes a deep breath and ignores the rattling he feels inside. ‘And then that morning, after Adam left, I coughed up the bluebell petals.’

Adam’s mouth makes what should be a beautiful ‘o’ shape, but Andrew can’t recognise it as such through the pain he’s feeling, can't see through the tears that are spilling unwillingly from his eyes.

All of him knows, that the plume of flowers from Hanahaki will disappear when the one you are in love with kisses you as a sign of there love for you.

He feels like his heart is being wrenched from him without permission when a pair of lips on press against his mouth, but the weight of the flowers doesn’t leave his stomach. The kiss feels like a cruel mix of a first kiss and a goodbye kiss, lips that feel familiar as if they are part of a memory. The new feeling of a beard brushing his chin as Adam pulls away, damp with Andrew's tears. Steven’s kiss is somehow even worse because it comes with a whispered sorry, the quietest he’s ever heard Steven speak. He’d imagined kissing Steven so many times, and to actually have it happen and to have it feel so wrong and disconnected could almost kill him. Will actually kill him his brain supplies.

He has to leave, there is nothing in the office for him now. Suddenly it feels walls feel like they are closing in around him, like the coffin his body will soon rest in. He coughs, and feels the pierce of thorns, burning through his lungs, the petals that spill from his mouth feel like they are flying across the room in slow motion.

There’s silence or at least it feels like silence to him. He picks out one sentence, it’s the last he ever hears.

‘Oh Andrew, I’m sorry’.

And the last thing he ever thinks is that he doesn’t know who said it, but that it doesn’t matter now, just trivial knowledge in the face of the darkness clouding his vision.

When he closes his eyes, he sees a field of bluebells, the three of them standing there, framed by Cherry Blossoms in full spring bloom. Adam’s face half concentrating on a camera, Steven looking at him with his normal smile, he lets his arm rest around them both, gives them the same smile he would as he feeds them food soft smile and soft eyes. He gently pulls the three of them down into the bed off bluebells and that’s the last he knows.

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes i can't sleep and i think of little plots to help me sleep and sometimes i write them down and then they become things that i cry at while writing. entirely inspired by one of these moments, and the spring standards song halcyon days, from which it takes its name and opening quote from. 
> 
> is this slight self-indulgent in its sadness, yes. was this written to a break up playlist, yes. yell at me in the comments or whatever this could be terrible and only affecting me. Or tell me I need to stop self-projecting on to whatever I’m watching at any given time.
> 
> (u know when childish gambino says 'is it sad, sure but it's a sadness i chose' that’s what this is)


End file.
